Burzum said:
I went to a fine arts school, I have plenty of knowledge about copyright laws. Copyright laws would be impossible to enforce on tattoos, and the ownership of any tattoo art (does the artist own it or the person he tattooed it on? it's not clear because there's no contract) is ambiguous. Second, after you buy your tattoo, you aren't making money on it. You can go ahead and copy the Mona Lisa on an oil canvas, make it look exactly like the original painting, but you can't sell it. You can, however, proudly display it in your home.
I went to law school and copyright still puzzles me. I should have went to art school.
Seriously, ownership can belong to the artist, or jointly to the client and artist, or to the client via express agreement. This is covered in my articles I linked. If you want even more knowledge, please read them.
Also, in addition to models, etc making money off their image, another big problem is the copying tattoo artist who does indeed make money or profit some way from the theft.
As for the Mona Lisa, well that was 16th century, the time period doesnt cover centuries.
Oh, and I never said copyright claims were impossible to enforce, just impractical in many circumstances.
I think that it sucks that people are so uncreative that they feel they need to bring a photo into a tattoo studio and say, "I want this exactly!" It's also crappy that some artists feel that's an okay thing to do. But I think it is something for which any tattooed person who plasters the internet with their photos has to be prepared. And unless you do have lots of time and money and lawyers on your hands, you'll probably have to live with it.
The theft of tattoos from our online galleries really pisses me off. I need to show my best work on my website, but when I put it up there is always a risk of theft. I do have several warnings one of which comes up if you try to right click the image. but anyone can copy it if they know how to. I'd try watermarks but if they are going to steal it to tattoo it they can just print it and trace what they need. Sad really.
The wost part it the so called "artists" who do the coping. really anyone uncreative enough to copy a design exactly from another tattoo is not going to do a good job. If they could do a good job they wouldn't copy they would do a custom piece with the original as inspiration only.
In the old days the offender would just have their hands broken, no more problem with them coping tattoos if they couldn't move their fingers anymore. Ah some things were better back then.
There is a tattoo artist in Japan who had someone submit images of her work to a tattoo book saying it was their work...possibly in the first "Tattoo Girls" book (?)- how is that for crap!
Hiding your work for fear of imitation is naff! It's like an artist or a photographer not having an exhibition or putting out an anthology cos they are scared people will rip them off. Unfortuantely there are always people at the bottom who will copy the people at the top.
Marisa_DiMattia
NEWSWIRE
I'm lost
MAR 26, 2007 07:22 PM